The MLB Wild Card Round Should Be A Winner Take All Game, NOT A Best Of Three Series

I understand that I’m risking being a victim of recency bias here, but having watched this Wild Card round, something about it just didn’t feel right. Except for the crowds in Philadelphia, none of these games felt like playoff games. Part of that is that two of these games were at Tropicana Field, a ballpark with an atmosphere that mirrors a high school gym, but you get my point.

This was my biggest fear when it was announced that the postseason would expand to 12 teams. The Wild Card round feels like tuneups for the main event, which will start on Saturday. We’re never going to go back to the 10-team format. There’s too much money at stake, and ultimately, the Phillies run to the World Series last year legitimized the expanded postseason. But something about this format does need changing, and I think the best course of action would be to make the Wild Card rounds a winner-take-all game.

I know what the counterarguments are going to be right away. "You play 162 games a year; having it all come down to one game is unfair." I don't really know how to respond to that. If you don't want it to come down to one game, play better during the regular season. Win more games. The idea of making the Wild Card round more than just a one-game plan stemmed from the Pittsburgh Pirates, who had wonderful seasons in 2014 and 2015 but ultimately got shut down in the one-game playoff because Madison Bumgarner and Jake Arrieta, respectively, put their balls on their chin. Thems the breaks. That's why we call them Wild Cards.

People who complain about not wanting to go back to the one-game Wild Card are people who forget how fucking tense and electric those play-in games were. The Royals' classic comeback in 2014 kicked off their World Series run. Edwin Encarnacion's walkoff home run against the Orioles when Buck Showalter forgot that Zack Britton was on the roster. Those were electric moments. Teams were emptying the clip because they knew there was no tomorrow. To me, that's awesome. You can open things back up once you get to the Divisional Series. 

We can go back and forth about the format, but you can't argue with me that this year's Wild Card round was anything other than a dud. It lacked tension and suspense, and it felt like an opportunity for the actual playoff teams to play some warm-up games before they got to the main event. That isn't what playoff baseball should be. If you want to have expanded playoffs, great, but you must return to a place where it feels like October baseball again. Kicking off the postseason on a fucking Tuesday afternoon doesn't do people any favors, but I understand that it's a necessary evil. There are ways to work around it. Go back to the play-in games. They were way more fun.